wide area information servers

1 definition found

wide area information servers - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  Wide Area Information Servers
  WAIS
  
     <networking, information science> (WAIS) A distributed
     information retrieval system.  WAIS is supported by Apple Computer
     , Thinking Machines and Dow Jones.  Clients are
     able to retrieve documents using keywords.  The search returns
     a list of documents, ranked according to the frequency of
     occurrence of the keyword(s) used in the search.  The client
     can retrieve text or multimedia documents stored on the
     server.  WAIS offers simple natural language input,
     indexed searching for fast retrieval, and a "relevance
     feedback" mechanism which allows the results of initial
     searches to influence future searches.  It uses the ANSI Z39.50
      service.  Public domain implementations are
     available.
  
     Other information retrieval systems include archie,
     Gopher, Prospero, and World-Wide Web.
  
     Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.infosystems.wais.
  
     Telnet (telnet://sunsite.unc.edu).
  
     (1995-03-13)